This Week In My Existence I

Time for an update and what’s been happening between last Friday and now.

I have been aiming to get a new television (mine stopped coming on when I asked it to and instead would come on anywhere between 30 minutes and 8 hours later), another book case (even though I already bought one this year), and a writing desk with chair as I have been wanting to write more. I can write using the laptop on the breakfast tray, but my back and then the rest of my muscles begin to hurt too much.

I was preparing for my book club on the Saturday with having to finish putting together a list of questions and then I wanted to go to the shop to get some tea, coffee, and food supplies for it. I had been buggered that week for reasons I can’t remember and low on energy, but I went to the shop anyway. Especially after I broke one of my bins and it needed to be replaced.

I thought while I’m out I might as well be naughty and instead of just going to the shopping centre for book club stuff and bins, we also went to a few home ware stores…. I can’t deal with the lack of space and being crowded by books so we started hunting for a book case. Sarah and I ended up going to two places and buying a bookcase, a smallish desk, and a comfy as chair to go with!

They haven’t been assembled yet, but I’ll take pictures when they are. Well, maybe.

Saturday was book club and unfortunately between book club and energy problems I didn’t get to spend any time with the rels that came to visit on the weekend. I was pretty knackered from the Friday and then after Saturday I was f*cked. Anyway my mate R got to come to the book club and met up with us at my place first so R, Sarah, and I could all go together.

I think it was an excellent meet this time around (first time not everyone knew each other and I was a bit nervous and also had the flu) which you can read about over at the book club blog.

The next two days were more of a dazed and confused mode, but I had Sarah to keep me company for one of them (yay). I also had to start reading the book for the Crossroads book club which my mum and I were going to on the Wednesday. That book was pretty uneventful (I’ll post about it on my book blog), but the meet up wasn’t. They were a lovely bunch of ladies (both book clubs have only female members. I think I’m going to have to schedule in some guy time somewhere and do some masculine stuff. Now if only the majority of my male friends weren’t so far away. Thank zeus Fallout New Vegas is coming out next week because the boy in me wants to come out and play for a bit), very welcoming and friendly, but mostly my mum’s age which is great for her. I really didn’t mind about that though, but I have posted about that on my book blog as well if you want to check that out.

Oh! I have a Yoshi! After the book club I went to Game to pre-order Fallout New Vegas and they had all these plush toys lined up at the counter. They were Mario ones. I used to love playing Mario Brothers when I was a kid and Yoshi has always been my favourite so of course I had to buy them. I got a Mario for Sarah and a Yoshi for me.

This is them together taken with my mobile phone. The light is low because Sarah had a headache (stupid headaches), but I may take a picture of Yoshi at a later date so you can see all of him and his cute little shell.

Besides that I’ve seen the kids this week, spilt a bowl of weetbix so it went flying all over my bed, floor, my laptop, and in my ugg boot! I’ve also been reading a bunch, and am considering cleaning the balcony because I really want to sit outside in the lovely weather (the sun shines on my balcony till about 10am and then after that it’s much cooler).

And last, but not least – I know I’ve mentioned this in a few places and promise everyone this will be the last place to mention it so you don’t all get sick of hearing of it, but Jim Butcher (the author and creator of The Dresden Files) called me an asshat. I know that may not be a very good thing because called an asshat by an author, but it highly amuses me. You’ve got to laugh about these things though or else you just get strung out about it. I’m strung out and stressed out enough as it is thank you very much. Again that is on my book blog, but I’m not going to link to it (if you really want to read it let me know and I’ll share it with you).

That’s that. Happy weekend time everyone!

Predictable Rom Coms and Life

I just finished watching He’s Just Not That Into You. It’s an alright movie. Good for something light to watch and a few chuckles, but it’s also pretty stereotypically predictable as far as movies go. Straight away you make assumptions about the characters based on the usual formulae for romantic comedies and next thing you know that’s how it turns out.

HJNTY also is really bad with how it portrays women I think because I know there are some obsessive women out there, but we aren’t all that bad. I myself am an example. When I was dating I didn’t do the obsessive checking of the phone, the pacing, wondering why I’m not being contacted all the time and I knew when someone was blowing me off or even using me. It was ok because I was using them in turn (I know that sounds really bad, but people use each other all the time and there’s mutual usage as well which is what it was).

The only character I could relate to was Alex, played by Justin Long, who was the one saying he just isn’t into you to the obsessive girl. Otherwise none of the other characters even got a smidgeon of sympathy from me. Am I too harsh? Oh who cares.

That’s pretty much all I’ve done today after trying to catch up on some emails and whatnot. I’m taking it pretty easy today. I might finish reading the graphic novel I’m up to now, but probably watch some more flicks later. Sarah has a whole bunch on her portable hard drive which she has let me borrow so I have plenty to choose from.

I also think from now on every Friday I might do an update for the week. The Events of Bonnie’s Life… Sounds exciting doesn’t it? Oh so exciting.

Maybe an update before though? I don’t need to update with the M.E. Group I went to, but there has been plenty of other things going on. Or at least for me. Lets see…

Social and Relationships

In June I met Sarah who is awesome and an English teacher. How awesome is that?! I’m a writer who loves to read and she’s an English teacher who loves robots and Toy Story and books and words and space and sneakers and music and creativity. We plan on moving in together sometime next year. That was for everyone who has no idea what’s going on with that, but I’m also going to be doing an interview post over at my book blog to introduce her there because I’m reading books she recommends and she has a page all to herself. Any questions you have for her?

I’ll be meeting her parents hopefully some time soon, have already met three of her friends (who are lovely), and her dog Rambo who is so cute. Sarah has of course already met my mum and Oma which is hard to avoid, my sister, her kids, a few other relatives, and two of my friends. Am I missing anyone? I don’t know. I’m a little out of it.

I have been meeting some new people mostly through the book clubs and ME group, but not anyone I am hanging out with outside of those which is ok for me at the moment because I’m stuffed. Except the stuffed part is a bit of a bugger because it means I also haven’t been able to hang out with my friends outside of book club either.

Oh well, I see all this as an adjustment and believe at some point it will smooth out while I work around energy levels and other plans.

Books and Writing

I have been reading a lot and not writing anywhere near as much as I feel I should be, but I have decided to stop beating myself up about that one. It’s too depressing to think about and gets me down when I don’t get to write 10,000 words or more a week, but at the same time I’m doing all these other things so why should I feel like I’m doing nothing or the wrong thing?

I started a book club for my sister and I to be a part of and then went and joined another one for my mum and I to go to (they can’t go at the same time). So there’s two social events twice a month right there and then the M.E. group on top of it which makes three. Three fixed ones. I’m pretty much doing something each weekend on top of the groups and just trying to rest during the week. That’s where the reading comes in.

I have been doing a comic challenge, arranging to host reading challenges for next year, joined other challenges, been asked to review graphic novels for a graphic novel publishing company, and had three authors either comment or refer to my blog this year, I’ve also had a speculative fiction imprint link to a post (I’m considering approaching them and some other companies about reviewing books as well, but I may have enough on my reading plate at the moment).

I’m also helping another book club get together on occasion. I won’t be joining it and I don’t have to get too involved, but I already have all this information in my head from putting mine together so why should that information not be shared?

Other stuff

What else? I have awesome sneaker boots (photos on their way when I get it together), red suede shoes which I’m quite proud of, miss all my friends, seen a few movies in the last few months (oh brain fart, what the hell did I see? Oh Inception which didn’t rock my world and Tomorrow, When The War Began which did and that links up to my review), and I can’t think of anything else which is good because I’m tired now. I’m going to go read.

M.E. Group

Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps it is time for an update with what’s going on in life and why I haven’t been posting on here regularly (but regularly on my book blog), but I’m going to put that off again for a few more days and blog about something else.

I have had M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis), also commonly and badly known as CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – which just leads everyone to say ‘oh you’re just tired!’ yeah right), since 2005.

Naturally with a shitty illness like that it can be hard to get out and meet people and even harder sometimes to keep up with your friends and maintain friendships.

Even though I’ve lived mostly in this area for almost 20 years I don’t really know anyone local so I have been branching out this year to see if I can interact socially on a more local scale.

That’s some back story and here’s a little more. Recently, very recently, a M.E. support group has been put together by a lovely woman who has the illness herself and yesterday was the first get together. A lot of people I know are interested in the meeting which is of course understandable (and not all of them have M.E. either) so instead of telling everyone individually I thought I could kill two birds with one stone; actually post something and update everyone about the meet up.

Of course I’m not going to share everything because there are always things you don’t share from support group meetings. They’re a support group for several reasons and one of them is to be a mode of sanctuary for the members and therefore privacy is involved, but I will share my experience and impressions because this is a big deal for me.

The meeting was just up the road from 12:30-2pm which is convenient, but at the same time I still need a lift because I’m not that physically dependant yet, so I made plans to get dropped off there at 12pm (had to be earlier because of other appointments).

The funny thing is I’m pretty nervous when it comes to dealing with strangers and groups of people. I’m even worse when it comes to strangers and groups of people who aren’t sick. Ok maybe that’s not funny. The funny part is – I have a book club I run which is extremely daunting to me and I have such nerves beforehand and such doubt about myself afterwards too (obviously I’m low on the self esteem/confidence side. A non-social friendly illness and a bout of social isolation will do that to you), but while I’m preparing for the ME group I’m nervous yet not overly so.

I’m nervous rocking up there, but not so much that I want to leave before I even arrive. I arrive, I sign in, I walk into the meeting room and I admit I wanted to run away just a little bit, but I sat down and introduced myself.

The reason I wanted to run away a little bit was because of two reasons;

1. I thought I’d be there earlier before everyone else and had prepared myself for that, but I wasn’t so I accepted it
2. When I walked into that room I was the youngest person in there. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great that there is a support group with people I can talk to and relate with which is why I told that freaking out part of my brain to shut up and deal with it, but at the same time when you’re the only one in a certain age group it can still be hard to relate even if they are sick. How do I relate to them outside of illness you know? Most of them have had kids and are married, been married, have quite a few years experience on me.

I eventually got over that when more people showed up (some younger) and there ended up being 10 of us.  They’re all lovely people and what was interesting is that we’re all women even though I know men who have this illness. The majority of our little group is also much older women. I can’t exactly say the age range or average age because I’m hopeless at reading ages these days, but the majority were older then me and I’m 27.

The range of illness years ranged from 2-12 so it was really a kaleidoscope of illness, but at the same time everyone had been through the same sort of thing when it comes down to it. If you talk to enough people with M.E. and F.M. (because there were Fibromyalgia sufferers there too) you can pretty much come up with a standard plot and that’s what I saw when we all shared our stories which is what the meeting was this time around. Just introducing ourselves and sharing. Lots of laughing while we cracked jokes only other sufferers can understand and some crying while we all shared in each others pain.

I’m a table top talker these days. There’s different levels of shyness of course and there’s different levels of interaction. I’m at the ‘lets look down while addressing several people at once’ which usually happens to be the table top. Then there is the looking up, but not quite looking at anyone. Followed by being able to meet the eyes of some people in the group and so on. The table top doesn’t scare me like seeing someone’s reaction to what I say or their inane judgements (they’re usually inane these days because they’re the judgements of the ignorant and arrogant so my brain is programmed to expect that. Unfortunately it’s all instinctual now and I’m having trouble not being wary and suspicious of everyone. Oh my zeus don’t I sound paranoid?!)

I also have a tendency to talk fast, faster still when I’m nervous, and softly. I’m a soft talker so when it came to my turn naturally I talked fast, I looked at the table because that table is my friend apparently, and I condensed a lot. There’s a lot in my past I just can’t talk about anymore because being vulnerable and dealing with it is too painful so I left out a lot which is fine by me. Everyone got the gist though and I didn’t gloss over what I did share so that’s something.

It was a really good meeting. It was lovely to be able to meet up with a group of people, even though I don’t know them from a bar of soap, who don’t question me. Who I can tell my every day and life problems to and I won’t have to explain it. It’s also really nice to be able to sit in a room that has those stupid fluorescent lights in them with a group of people and have one pipe up with “Does anyone mind if we turn these lights off?” That was lovely (I’m going to try that at my book club). I even got up and closed the blinds at one point and didn’t feel bad about it.

And when your brain has a glitch and you can’t remember what you were on about or where your thoughts were going like I am now, it’s ok because we all had that problem.

I think I needed this at this point in time because I have my friends, but we all have difficulty getting together at times. And I have my girlfriend and my family, but sometimes that’s even hard to organise. Then there is my book club, but I’m always wound so tight that I can’t quite enjoy it yet. So having a group of people I can relax with to a degree (well when it comes to that illness anyway) and socialise with once a month, without there being any expectations or obligations is quite lovely.

The only hurdle that I could possibly come to from this is mentioning Sarah. I mentioned I have a partner, but not what sex they are, and luckily it was in passing so no one asked any questions or I didn’t have to use ‘she is awesome’ like I wanted to. I really don’t care who knows I’m bisexual, but not everyone can handle someone who is queer and I don’t want to jeopardise my interactions with these people.

I think that might be enough posting for today, don’t you think? We’re meeting again at the end of next month and we’ll see what happens then. I will probably post about it again and hopefully post an update about goings on lately as well soon.

Listening To: The Beatles

Fox Totem

There are several different species of fox, but they all share the extreme cleverness and cunning that gave rise to the expression, “sly as a fox.”

Fox speaks of the need to develop the art of camouflage, invisibility, and shape shifting. It is agile, skilled, and unpredictable.

A fox being pursued by hounds will run across the tops of walls, cross streams diagonally, double back on its trail, run in circles and do anything to break the trail of its scent. It has a great ability to outwit both predators and prey. Fox teaches us how to slip out of unpleasant situations quietly and unnoticed.

Those with fox as a totem are often clever and witty but must remember to keep their crafty and clever nature balanced or it could backfire. Fox can also suggest that your actions might be too obvious and you need to learn to be more discreet.

Fox is one of the most uniquely skilled and ingenious animals of nature. Because it is a creature of the night, it is often imbued with supernatural powers. Author Ted Andrews states that fox are usually seen at dawn and dusk. Dusk is the beginning of its day, and the dawn its ending. These are the in between times, when the world of magic and the world in which we live intersect.

It lives on the edges of forests and open lands, the border areas. Because it is an animal of the between times and places, it can be a guide into the faerie realm. The fox has a long history of magic and cunning associated with it. It can move in and out of situations restoring order or causing confusion depending on the situation.

If fox is your totem pay attention to the way it moves and follow its lead. This is a powerful medicine to have and those that it belongs to should learn to use its skills for the benefit of all, including you.

Source: Unknown
Image Source